Arkgeo board meeting minutes. Friday April20th, 2012

ArkGeo Board Meeting Minutes

April 20, 2012

Round-Table Discussion* Discussion took place about the filing of the postcard 990 for non-profit organizations.* We have a wonderful new banner for our merchandise - designed and donated by Tim Stone! Thanks, Tim!* We have been asked by Garvan Gardens to help them with a geocaching project.

As of Thursday, April 19th there are a total of 242 registered voters, giving us an increase of 11 since last quarter and an increase of 31 since the July meeting. Which gets us closer to reaching our goal of a 20% increase (42) by July 2012. Voter registration is currently closed until after the board member elections are over at the end of May.

Don’t forget to vote in the upcoming board member elections starting on May 1st.

During the quarter ArkGeo hosted two Eat-N-Greets. One in North Little Rock and another in Batesville. There are others scheduled for Arkadelphia on April 28th and Ashdown on May 12th.

We held our first ever Arkansas Challenge Event at Mt Nebo State Park the weekend of March 31st. The event seems to have been a big hit with all the cachers who attended. Other than a few hiccups everything went smoothly. We will be soliciting ideas from the membership on ways to improve the challenge in the future. Thanks to everyone who came out and made this event so great. And a very special thanks to all the volunteers who stepped up in a big way to make sure everything ran smoothly. You guys and gals did an excellent job. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!

The ArkGeo web site still continues to perform well and once again I would like to thank Kevin Cackler for all his hard work keeping us going. It is much appreciated.

A great big Thanks to all of those who volunteer and spend some of their time promoting ArkGeo and geocaching in the state of Arkansas.

We upgraded our server again this year to beefier hardware, and hopefully everyone has noticed the dramatic speed improvement since then. We've also upgraded our website software and will (possibly) soon be able to take advantage of both a mobile stylesheet and a mobile application.

Two newsletters were sent out this year about the coin prepurchase, thanks to Chris Denton for writing those. These were also a sort of beta-test to see how our mailer worked, and I was very pleased with the results. I hope to use this system when sending out the coming newsletters from the Membership Relations Committee.

The election committee has compiled a slate of nominees for this year's election.On March 14th, the board was solicited for any nominees it may have, with no responses to the thread.The General membership was also solicited through the month of March, by re-opening the previously closed thread in the forums. There was also no action in this thread from the general membership.On March 20th, the board was had a motion, second, and majority vote to select the following candidates:Drmo913 - Morgan O'nealDatexanboy - Jeremy RowlandSayitagain - Jim SickCardsfans55 - Mike WaidJeremy Rowland (Datexanboy) then decided to drop out of the race on April 13th, due to medical reasons.The election committee had a 5th nominee come forward prior to the end of nomination time: Frank Philpott, Oldriverrunner

*We received a donation of an unknown number of soda bottles. We are currently selling those for bags of 12 w/lids - $6 and bags of 10 w/o lids - $4.We would like to purchase new merchandise before the annual meeting, but we look to the board for guidance on this since much of our funds are going to be tied up in the coin project.

Much of our time since the last meeting has been spent dealing with the new Arkansas Geocoin. After receiving several quotes we made the following recommendation to the board:

Purchase 500 geocoins from Oak Coins. Cost will be between $2500 and $3000.Price is between $5 and $6 per coin, including Groundspeak fee, special icon and shipping to us.We will sell the coins for $12 plus $3 shipping for those that want themshipped. ($3 includes a padded envelope and printing supplies) Shipping can be waived if they want to come pick them up.We will take pre-orders via PayPal which should cover most of the cost.Pre-Orders need to be in by mid-April (pick a date) so the final order can be paid for and coins shipped to us by the end of April.

The board accepted the proposal but changed the prices to $10 for preorders and $12 once they come in.

We have been in contact Oak Coins and they have provided updated artwork. The preorder link went up on the website earlier this week and preorders have been coming in.

Respectfully Submitted

Tim StoneBSA534Fundraising Committee Liasion

3. Community Relations Committee - We have an opportunity at Garven Garden's to setup a few ArkGeo caches. Maybe a multi cache, wherigo or just some plain old caches. I posted it in the Comm Rel. form today.Outside that, Pat put out a post to the team to start working on contacting outlets for publishing an ArkGeo specific article. We have had several posted lately on Geocaching and ArkGeo is mentionedbut nothing specifically on ArkGeo.

4. Events Committee -The Events Committee worked hard on the Arkansas Challenge Event which was quite successful. They will now be focusing their attention to the Annual Event on June 9th and will have the Cache pages posted during the coming week.

ArkGeo Newsletter – The Membership Relations Committee reports that the ArkGeo Newsletter is still in the planning stage, but anticipates a rough draft from Morgan O’Neal (drmo913) within the next few weeks. Items that have been discussed that may be included are:1) New Member Introductions2) GSAK Tips3) Favorite and oldest caches in Arkansas4) Message from the Board or Board President5) Events

Unfinished BusinessI. Status of ArkGeo Goals - All goals were updated. We are working to get this published as a google doc.

II. New ArkGeo Geocoin progress - The Board approved the artwork. Please remember that you can now preorder the new coin straight from the home page of ArkGeo! Just go to the Buy Swag link! Kevin will be sending out an email reminding the membership of this handy ordering tool.

III. Changing the ArkGeo Annual Event format - The Board sent this to the Events Committee for their consideration.

IV. ArkGeo History update - Wayne Lunsford is working on our written history.

New BusinessI. Sending a letter of welcome to all new voting member registrations (possibly including an ArkGeo pathtag) - The Board tabled the pathtag until our geocoins are generating income.

II. The Next Arkansas Challenge Event? - The Board authorized Richard Lee to pursue Hobbs State Park as the possible venue for our next Arkansas Challenge Event.

III. ArkGeo Store - The Board approved the new ArkGeo store. It is currently being used for the preordering of the 2012 edition of the ArkGeo Geocoin.

IV. Member requests that we form a Regional Emergency Call list (stuck, out of gas, or just need help) and a non-geocaching related prayer list for families or individuals in need - We are going to move this to a "sticky" on the forums

V. Changing registration cut-off - The Board voted to amend the wording about locking registration during the election period in the standing rules and election schedule. We will add the following to both documents: To be eligible to vote in the current election, you must be registered to vote by the day nominations close.